Kevin Smith's Red State

Kevin Smith has gone on tour showcasing his latest movie, Red State. For the tour he personally introduces the movie, sits at the back of the theater to watch alongside the audience, and then performs a Q&A. He admonishes that this is nothing new as movies such as Gone With the Wind were handled in a similar manner, although he is perhaps the only person in my lifetime to have done so.

Red State was not picked up by a movie studio. Instead of selling his movie for very little and having a third party represent it, Smith opted instead to showcase his movie in the same style that he has been providing his stand-up and Smodcast tours for the past 5+ years. At first Smith had toured extensively across the United States, leaving myself and others wondering if he would ever grace his audiences in Canada with the movie. Sure enough, on August 17th 2011 he did just that in the city of Calgary, Alberta.

I follow Kevin Smith's career with a level of regularity that fits somewhere between the obsessed and the curious. I love pretty much all of his movies equally and for that I am easily pleased with anything he produces. Not surprisingly I thoroughly enjoyed this movie. It is not a laugh-a-minute movie like Clerks but more akin to Dogma with a little more dry humor and levity. The story revolves around a hard-lined biblical group in the United States that kidnap three teenagers and as a result the FDA are called out to end the situation, ala Waco. The acting is excellent, which is not surprising as Smith bring out the best in his actors. The storyline is for the most part quite original and engaging with some very memorable moments. The only downside I wish to point out is that (and this is not a spoiler) the preacher has a very lengthy sermon that needed to be edited down. At some point during the sermon I believe the audience was beginning to get lost, however, the sermon does add a great element of fear and trepidation for what would come next. A positive note is that this movie feels like an indy art-house flick, with frayed edges and a richness that can be studied and discussed ad nauseum.

Following the movie Smith entertained the audience with over 2 hours of great commentary on everything from what occurred while and following the filming this picture to events in his personal life, along with answering numerous questions from the audience. In the early phase of this tour Smith was sometime accompanied by actors in the movie, but in this case it was solo Smith. It is hard to not like Smith because he is incredibly personable and real. There is not a moment when you feel that he is up there only for the money or that what he is doing is an act. This is a rare quality that is a driving reason as to why Kevin Smith has become so popular over the past two decades. 

I wholeheartedly recomend anyone reading this blog to go see Kevin Smith on his tour or at the least watch his latest movie Red State once it becomes available on DVD sometime later this fall or early winter.

The Town

Recently I was able to view an advanced screening of the new movie, The Town. It is written, directed, and stars Ben Affleck. Affleck plays a bank robber who falls in love with the girl he kidnaps. The story is one of the better of its genre but not exactly the best. The movie is being praised by film critics and to an extent I would have to agree with this. In particular what it does deserve praise for is Blake Lively's performance. Ben Affleck was also very good, however he does have a peculiar trait of jutting out his lower jaw when trying to talk with a Boston accent. Another high note is that the heist sequences are expertly depicted. As 'crime' and 'heist' genres have been portrayed numerous times in film it can be very difficult to produce something truly original. The heist scenes may not be the most original of its genre but they are nonetheless done well.

One of the major flaws in The Town is that the character development is weak. Ben Affleck's character Doug MacRay, is not exactly dynamic nor does he stand up against other memorable movie characters like Nick Moran's character Eddy from Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels. Despite this, Affleck's character still engages the viewer. He is somewhat likable and is fleshed out to a degree but is done so slowly throughout the movie and with too small of portions. There are numerous other characters in the movie but they are overshadowed by Affleck's character. MacRay's best friend in the movie, James Coughlin (played by Jeremy Renner) is a character who receives a fair amount of screen time. Renner is a decent actor but nothing too remarkable and plays the character of Coughlin flatly and adds nothing noteworthy. Further, the character Coughlin acts solely as a prop to MacRay.

One actor who does add to the movie is Blake Lively, who plays Krista Coughlin (pictured right in a scene from The Town with Ben Affleck). To use the over-used phrase, Lively steals every scene she is in. Each moment she graced us with her appearance I instantly thought of how she will win an Oscar for her performance; mark my words, Lively will win or at least be nominated this year for best supporting actress.


The storyline for The Town is enjoyable. You will not be disappointed watching this movie, but do not expect the best. The movie starts out very strong with MacRay standing apart from his crooked brethren as a kind of smart Boston poet with a penchant for bank robberies and a taste for the ultra-violence. However, somewhere during the movie the story looses this feel. I don't wish to spoil anything about this movie but there are aspects to the story that occur in the beginning of the movie that become lost, forgotten, or wasted later in the movie. Another drawback to the story was that the first half of the movie felt choppy. The scenes felt spliced together and seemed to lack flow. Somewhere during the middle of the movie, however, the storyline began to gel. Perhaps the problem is that the storyline was not willing to focus on just a few characters and elements of the story. Instead, Affleck attempted to include too much in the story while not providing each segment enough of an opportunity to grow. Another factor is that few if any of the characters were allowed to develop and so I the viewer felt disengaged from being invested in what the story meant for the characters.

Visceral action is needed in a movie such as The Town, but it was not provided. In some of the best movies of the 'crime' genre such as Reservoir Dogs, there are characters that act absolutely reprehensible (characters Mr.White and Mr.Orange from Reservoir Dogs pictured at right). I did not see this anywhere in the movie. You need to have a truly bad guy, or the main character who you want to root for perform a deed that makes you cringe at the fact that you do like them; again I think of another movie that did this well, History of Violence. This negative strike also goes for the heist scenes as a whole, which was briefly mentioned at the start of this post. While they are definitely engaging and boasts one of the better car chase scenes I've watched in a while, it was still not enough. They needed to be about 5-10 minutes longer and to have had more drama added to them. I wished that they had added more suspense to the scenes to make you wonder who would make it out.

With all of this being said, The Town still stands as a very enjoyable heist /crime movie that has some incredible acting from Lively. The heist scenes were also well constructed and the car chase was great fun, although these scenes could have been longer. Go see this movie. You will enjoy it, but just don't expect it to be as good as movies such as Reservoir Dogs or Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels.

The Expendables

As a child of the 80's, my bread and butter were action movies. I also loved all other genres of film from an early age, but there was something truly fascinating about the movies that starred Arnold Schwarzenegger and Stallone. Movies such as Rambo, Predator, Commando, Cobra, Rocky, and Conan (to name but a few) were some of my favorite movies as a child and continue to be so today. In particular Rambo was an interesting phenomena for it spawned a cartoon and series of toys. The movie was further attractive to me for it told the story of a hardened Vietnam vet, who I saw akin to my own father. These movies (I believe) were also attractive to other children of the 80's for they espoused true heroism. They featured heroes that never faltered and always won when they pursued the right and honorable course of action; such actions commonly centered around defending one's country and woman. The story's protagonists and antagonists were all black and white. There was no questioning the motivations. Such stories are rarely told today, and some of the classics from the 80's are considered today as chauvinistic, weak in plot, redundant, ultra-violent, and etc. Nonetheless, it is for the reasons I outlined above that I am still fond of this genre of movie and why I felt so incredibly drawn to the recently released movie, The Expendables.

(The Expendables panel at the San Diego Comic Con 2010)

The movie, The Expendables, is about a rag tag group of mercenaries. They go into difficult places to perform difficult deeds and get paid quite well for it. The story in the movie is about this group of mercs who get a job to kill the dictator /overthrow the government of a small island. Predictably however, the job is not as straightforward as it seems, but then again the storyline itself is pretty straightforward. The plot is not as interesting as some of the 80's classic action movies and the comedic lines are nowhere near as funny either. Nonetheless, the storyline hearkens back to those classics and it is that nastolgia for this genre that pulls you in. You know it's over the top and corny as all hell but it is still enjoyable because you rarely see this type of movie anymore. Another big factor is the BIG cast the movie has. You absolutely cannot go wrong with a cast that includes: Stallone, Dolph Lundgren, Mickey Rourke, Jet Li, Jason Statham, Terry Crews, Randy Couture, Gary Daniels, and Steve Austin. As if that was not enough, Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger have cameo roles. Sure there are plenty of actors that could have been added (most notably Jean Claude Van Damme), but you can't have everything; as a side note, at the San Diego Comic Con 2010 The Expendables panel, Stallone mentioned how there were plenty of actors that had commitment conflicts or who had personality conflicts!

One of the notable aspects of this cast is that each actor was featured in their own style of action. Jet Li was filmed as Jet Li with his trademark martial arts style, Jason Statham was filmed in his own style with the fast action sequences, and I noticed that Randy Couture used combat moves he is familiar with in the UFC octagons. This was great as it really took advantage of all the actors they had on the screen. However, what the movie did not allow for was giving the audience a chance to know any of the characters or care for them. This is where the plot was obviously thin and that the focal point of the movie was really only to showcase how many friends Stallone has.

One small downside to this movie is the special effects. There is not too much CGI in this movie (thankfully), but when it does appear it does so with no justice to the scene. In one instance the plane that the mercs use is flying at night over the ocean. For some reason it was shown via the usage of CGI and it looks incredibly fake and pulled me out of the movie for a few seconds. The usage of CGI in these few scenes was even more noticeable because it is hardly used. Like the action flicks of the 80's, the majority of the scenes were filmed with real actors kicking but and using real guns that caused real explosions; it was nice.

Overall, if you are reading this and are a fan of those 80's action flicks that I too was of, then you will enjoy this movie on many levels. However, if you are not (like the annoying lady behind me in the theatre), then DO NOT GO. This is also not the greatest movie of its genre but it also offers something that has not been done before, bring together this large cast and do it well. Hopefully they will make a sequel that bring back even more of these 80's action heroes and this time add in a better story.